An­na-Lisa Paul

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram is ap­peal­ing to chick­en de­pot own­ers/op­er­a­tors not to en­gage in price goug­ing amidst the con­tin­u­ing cri­sis cur­rent­ly af­fect­ing the poul­try in­dus­try.

Speak­ing with re­porters in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day, he urged per­sons to ex­er­cise un­der­stand­ing and re­straint, even as he as­sured the sit­u­a­tion should be sort­ed out very soon.

While the is­sue of pric­ing re­mains pri­mar­i­ly un­der the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism, Rati­ram said, “We have con­fi­dence in our de­pot own­ers. We have con­fi­dence in our stake­hold­ers there, that we would not see those types of ac­tiv­i­ties hap­pen­ing be­cause col­lec­tive­ly, we build the coun­try to­geth­er.”

To the pub­lic, he urged them not to pan­ic and rush out to stock up on poul­try.

“If it is that they go to the de­pot, they may not get all the chick­en they want at one point in time be­cause some­times, there may be events and stuff like that but they are get­ting chick­ens at the de­pot,” he said.

He cau­tioned while the birds may not quite reach the five-pound mark, “They should not pan­ic.”

Speak­ing with re­porters in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day, Rati­ram in­di­cat­ed, “It is some­thing we have em­braced and looked at, and we have iden­ti­fied the so­lu­tions go­ing for­ward.”

He con­firmed the Gov­ern­ment had in­vit­ed Ex­pres­sions of In­ter­est (EOI) for the de­vel­op­ment of the par­ent-bird flock so they can re­duce the im­por­ta­tion of hatch­ing eggs in­to the coun­try.

Seek­ing to high­light just how gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to ad­dress the cri­sis af­fect­ing the poul­try sec­tor cur­rent­ly, the min­is­ter said, “Over the years, we would have been im­port­ing an av­er­age of about 60 mil­lion hatch­ing eggs, and they were all ba­by chicks, in­to the coun­try, which was ba­si­cal­ly the start of the en­tire poul­try in­dus­try.”

In­sist­ing this was the foun­da­tion of the sec­tor to­day, Rati­ram said the chal­lenges posed by weath­er pat­terns could not be con­trolled by the Gov­ern­ment or the farm­ers.

But he added fluc­tu­a­tions in peak weath­er pat­terns meant that “there are just some days that are hot­ter than the oth­er days.”

This he ex­plained, had caused, “Farm­ers to more or less, space their birds and have a re­duced num­ber of flock,” but he as­sured, “That mat­ter is sort­ing it­self out.”

As re­peat­ed an ear­li­er promise that, “In a few weeks time, we should see that be­ing reg­u­lat­ed be­cause there is mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy that some of our farms, our poul­try sup­pli­ers are us­ing like the tun­nel ven­ti­lat­ed farm­ing tech­nol­o­gy so they will more or less ramp up pro­duc­tion us­ing mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.”

Rati­ram was hap­py to re­port fur­ther that his min­istry was work­ing with both farm­ers and stake­hold­ers to avoid land­ing in a “nu­tri­tion­al chal­lenge” lat­er on as poul­try was the main pro­tein source in T&T.